


Astriferous

by thishazeleyeddemon



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autism Spectrum, F/F, Fluff, Future Fic, Gen, Magic, Non-Linear Narrative, Nonbinary Character, Older Characters, Pansexual Character, Passing the mantle, Post-Canon, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, and not named Stanley, autistic characters, everyone is queer and magic let's put it like that, since apparently the author is a son of a bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3706885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thishazeleyeddemon/pseuds/thishazeleyeddemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Astriferous - adj. Bearing stars, made of stars. Etymology: Latin astrifer; astrum - star + ferre - to bear.</p><p>The twins go back to Gravity Falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Astriferous

The twins went back to Gravity Falls. The old town with its strange histories and magic in the stones and the woods called to them, as did Wendy and Grenda and Candy and the Stan twins and an old house with moss growing on the roof and a laboratory in the basement. It suited them, like a glove, and they always had the feeling that even if they went to school in Piedmont, made friends in Piedmont, ate and slept in Piedmont, when they went to Gravity Falls they were coming home.

Mabel grew muscular and long, fast and bold. She'd wake up in the middle of the night to sketch symbols on the walls and sew protection runes into her sweaters so she could give them to the minority kids she met because everyone needs a little guarding, and when the world is out to get you, you needed more than some. She made lemonade with charisma infusions and gave it out to people going to job interviews, or students about to give presentations. She walked the woods at night with Candy and Grenda and the light of a candle, came back with her hair braided with fairy lights and a story about this goblin she met who showed her how to weave metal into cloth so fine it was like armor made of silk. She conjured blue and green and pink and purple flames, a shining firework with sharp eyes and an easy laugh and brass knuckles.

Dipper had stars in his eyes and a curiosity that knew no bounds. What had been a simple passion grew into a driving force as he aged, _why, what, where, how, when._ He saw problems and worked at them until they no longer existed. At fifteen he developed a passion for programming and designed apps that would let the buyer be invisible, or intangible, or mute the world because hypersensitivity sucked. The night called him, the moon and the waves and the mindscape. Sometimes when walking there, he'd see Bill Cipher, and they'd nod to each other, an agreement not to fight today, nothing more. Mabel would come home ( _because the Mystery Shack was home, really, more so than Piedmont where Dipper had to pretend to be Mabel's sister because his parents didn't understand and the twins would curl around each other at night, whispering fears and worries and about wrongness, because no one in Piedmont understood Mabel wasn't always a sister and Dipper was always a brother_ ), and Dipper would lie still on his bed, unmoving, unblinking, hardly breathing. A visitor to the Mystery Shack had found Dipper like that in a corner, and she wouldn't grasp that Dipper wasn't dead. He was out and about in the world, riding in the bodies of animals, learning secrets and wonders. He kept his own journals now, with stars on the covers. Stanley Pines laughed the first time they saw them(they were still getting used to it being okay to be not a boy or a girl or anything else) and remarked that clearly, things run in the family.

And Mabel tattooed symbols into her brother's arms, shields and spellwork to calm his paranoia and anxiety and more physical protection because even in Gravity Falls people didn't always treat boys with breasts right. And the two watched the stars shimmer in the night sky. Dipper is tired out by the sun, and daytime, when everything is bright and loud and he can't think because no one except his family and Wendy and Robbie knows to be quiet and not overload him, and hyposensitive Mabel has enough trouble seeing by daylight that the grey moonlit world can upset her, but stars are their middle ground. They don't hurt Dipper's eyes, and for Mabel, stars are fires far away.

                                                                                                                                          ~••••~

They're only sixteen in body but sometimes they feel sixty, shouldering the weight of Bill Cipher and guarding the world from what lives in Gravity Falls. And sometimes it's the reverse, when they find something new and wonderful and strange like the gemstones made of crystallized light and feel like twelve-year-olds again, awash in mysteries they don't understand. Mabel makes an intricate pendant full of moving parts and added the gem to it and Dipper sees her, or sometimes them, stimming with it when anxious or excited.

They're not really children, but that's okay. Children don't banish dream demons or visit the mindscape or outwit dragons or build watches that can tell the time on three different layers of reality or sew poetry on the inside of her Grunkle and her Grandparent's Christmas sweaters, spells against Alzheimer's and heart attacks and all diseases of the elderly and a spell for longevity because Mabel can't handle the loss of the original Mystery Twins, the man who got her fireworks and suggested some ways to flirt with people of your gender (he would know, he's never cared about gender, which was a hard thing to handle in the nineteen-forties) or the enby who she helped discover their identity and who wrote the journals that were Dipper's special interest for ages and showed her how to box.

They're not children. They're fighters and scientists and witches and that's hard but it's okay because witches can go play laser tag and drench each other with water balloons telekinetically thrown. No one said heroes had to be serious and angsty all the time.

                                                                                                                                        ~••••~

Robbie spends Thursdays in the cemetery reading the future in the graveyard dirt. It's hard because the future isn't set in stone, but he manages. Wendy and Dipper go walking with him sometimes; after all, Mabel says he wasn't lying about not knowing about the message in the song, and they've decided together that they ought to keep an eye on him, for his own sake, now that Tambry's moved away and only visits in the summers, just like the Pines twins. They're all Gravity Falls kids, through and through.

Candy grows tall and beautiful, with long, dark hair and bright eyes. She sells jewelry charmed with spells for contentment, joy, protection, knowledge, and a myriad of other things, including the bracelets and rings she keeps for customers like Dipper or Grunkle Stan, with the less kind enchantments. Grenda makes pastries that taste like bottled sunshine and happiness, potions that change bodies and potions that change voices. She gives one to Dipper after puberty starts up and takes one herself. Transitioning is easy when you have magical help. They walk with Mabel at night, and even though lights flicker around them and shadows hiss they don't mind, sure in their soul that the worst thing you can find in the town is them. Mabel, by their request, only tells Dipper about their special relationship.

Wendy patrols the woods, swinging her axe, a true warrior. This is her town, and monsters learn to be wary of the college girl with red hair and a charmed axe and a personal mission to keep her town safe. She and Stanley killed the Shapeshifter together, and came home sore and covered in green blood. Wendy's magic is a lot less flashy, about survival and strength and courage and healing and blood. It comes down to the blood, for everyone.

Pacifica is a sworn ally. Her parents died, and no one was sorry, but it meant Pacifica managed her family's estate and money. She draws magic circles on the floor and summons spirits of air and fire and water and earth and goes walking in the twilight dimensions for days for them but weeks and months for her and records her stories on her iPad. She practically lives at the Mystery Shack now.

The Stan twins never seem to grow older, just trickier and more secretive. Stanley finds comfort in the Mystery Shack, retreating to there when the modern world gets too intense. They never stop their research, because Stanley is one of those people for whom the desire for knowledge is a driving force in their lives. Stanford keeps the Mystery Shack open, adding all sorts of oddities that are real, minor, just enough to keep the tourists coming.

And slowly, what started as Mystery Twins, becomes the Mystery Team.


End file.
